It is a long way for me to travel by the highway, for the hour presses on; and I know a short path, and in skill I lead the way for many others. He killed the gray-eyed, dapple-backed serpent by his arts, O Arcesilas, and with her own help he stole away Medea, the death of Pelias.

Here Pindar breaks off. "It is a long way for me by the highway," he says, "and the hour presses; I know a short path." In one line Jason kills the serpent τέχναις, "by his arts," the word that answers the βία, force, of line 212. In the next he steals Medea away σὺν αὐτᾷ, "with her own help": she is not carried off, she comes. The last words of the scene are τὰν Πελίαο φόνον, "the death of Pelias." Pindar names her by what she will do. In the story as Apollodorus later tells it, Medea persuades the daughters of Pelias to cut up their father and boil him (Library 1.9.27). The serpent is ποικιλόνωτος, "dapple-backed," and the scene began at line 214 with a ποικίλα ἴυγξ, a dappled wryneck: it opens and closes on a creature of many colors, and in the middle of the killing Pindar turns to the king the ode was sung for: ὦ ʼρκεσίλα, "O Arcesilas."